By John Helmer, Moscow

On January 10, Oleg Deripaska (lead image, front left), the Russian oligarch who controls the state aluminium monopoly Rusal and electricity producer EN+, ordered his personal lawyers, Bryan Cave, into the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. There, court papers reveal that Deripaska is charging Paul Manafort (rear left) and his associates with “fraud, gross negligence, blatant disloyalty, and rapacious self-dealing”. Deripaska’s allegation is that between April and July of 2008 he was swindled out of $26.3 million.

The court papers represent Deripaska to be a naïve partner in a business in Odessa, Ukraine, for which Deripaska did no due diligence; took no security over assets; kept no records; saw no accounts; and did nothing at all for almost a decade.  In the New York court papers, Deripaska confesses himself to be unable to manage the smallest of businesses, let alone several multi-billion dollar enterprises vital to the economic security of the Russian state.

“Of course, Oleg Vladimirovich doesn’t think that,” responds a Russian business figure who knows Deripaska well. “This is Deripaska’s alibi in case his name is listed as one of the oligarchs liable for the next round of US sanctions. He is saying he hasn’t been buying favour from Americans close to [President Donald] Trump; he says they have cheated him. And if Deripaska’s name turns out not to be on the new US list, it’s also his alibi when the Kremlin asks why.”

“The Russian oligarchs are between the hammer and the anvil,” explains an international banker who has served on a leading Russian corporation board. “It’s bad enough if the coming US sanctions list puts their US business and assets at risk. It’s even worse if they aren’t on the list, and [President Vladimir] Putin suspects them of disloyalty and of cutting a secret deal with the Americans.” (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, January 16th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Alcoholics have ruled Russia in the past, but for the first time in Russian history a producer of alcohol, a winemaker, is running for president in the March election.  

Boris Titov, owner of Abrau-Durso whose shares are listed on the Moscow stock exchange, is careful to avoid speaking to the voters about what he knows best.  If elected president, is Titov intending to make alcohol cheaper, or more expensive, he was asked ahead of the launch of his campaign last month. Does he propose to raise or lower the price of beer, wine and vodka by increasing or cutting state excise taxes?

Titov replied through a spokesman:  “He will not discuss alcohol taxes.  There are no plans concerning alcohol regulation in his programme.”  Supporting him, and one of the advisors to Titov’s “Party of Growth”,   is Alexander Mechetin, owner of the Beluga vodka brand, and one of the four vodka oligarchs who dominate the Russian vodka market (lead image, 1^st left; to right, Rustam Tariko; Andrei Strelets; Vasily Anisimov).

The reason for their sensitivity isn’t political. On current polling of Russian voter choice, Titov will be lucky to draw one percent of the vote on March 18.  There isn’t a temperance constituency in Russia to appeal to. Promising heavier taxes on alcohol will upset poor drinkers, hurt legal producers, and encourage an increase in the tax-evading trade in samogon (moonshine) and alcohol substitutes, which cause alcohol poisoning. Titov and Mechetin, like the other commercial alcohol producers, as well as the Republic of Tatarstan, currently the biggest volume producer of vodka in the country, say they want the alcohol market to stabilize at the current level of tax, while they produce and sell more alcohol domestically, as well as to the international vodka market.  They are looking to the federal government to use police methods to crack down on illegal, untaxed alcohol plants, while motivating regions like Tartarstan to deter the illegal trade by keeping in the region as much of the tax as they can collect.

Titov the winemaker isn’t going to spill the vodka bottle. Nor will any other candidate for the Russian presidency. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, January 15th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Four years ago almost precisely, on January 12, 2014 – just before the Anglo-American war against Russia began in earnest — we reported that the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo was publishing what it called  a market atlas of the jobs and professions which will be newly needed by the year 2020, and those to be needed no longer.

One of the new ones was what the Skolkovo atlas called a cyber-cleaner (кибердворник). This is a specialist in removing from the internet and all digital data archives whatever information someone pays to have cleaned or deleted entirely, and its substitution with what the specialist is paid to put there – fake news, kompromat, disinformation, PR, advertising, fraud.  One of the professions the cyber-cleaners will replace, according to the atlas, is journalism. (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, January 14th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the year since we last wished you well, Dear Reader, you have read on average three of our new stories every working week. Also, you’ve spent an average of more than thirty minutes reading each story. (more…)

by Editor - Friday, December 22nd, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Central Bank of Russia has called for state prosecutors in Moscow to investigate its most costly bank takeover and bailout,  the three-year refinancing and reorganization of National Bank Trust and Otkritie Bank, on suspicion of multibillion-dollar fraud by Vadim Belyaev, the former chief executive  and leading shareholder of Otkritie.

In fear of arrest,  Belyaev has reportedly taken refuge in the UK. According to a press leak  from the Central Bank on Wednesday, “Vadim Belyaev, the owner of Otkritie Bank, is hiding in London now and doesn’t intend to return to Russia. The [Central Bank] financial regulator sees no reason for cooperation with Belyaev any longer, and is ready to consider his activities at Otkritie as fraud.  At the request of the deputy head of the Central Bank,  Vasily Pozdyshev,  the General Prosecutor is studying transactions of Otkritie involving the [largescale] withdrawal of capital.” The Central Bank source reports “the weight of evidence suggests that 127 billion rubles [$2.2 billion] allocated to Otkritie for the rehabilitation of Trust have been despatched, not to their intended purpose but in an unknown direction.”

Other Otkritie Bank shareholders  involved in the transactions now under investigation by the prosecutors include Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil;  Ruben Aganbegyan of the Moscow Stock Exchange, and  Alexander Mamut,  an investor in the Russian insurer Ingosstrakh and the Polymetal goldmining group. 

Today the Central Bank refused officially to confirm or deny the details reported so far. Alexander Dmitriev, spokesman for Belyaev and the Otkritie board before its takeover by the Central Bank, also refused to respond to the reported allegations. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, December 21st, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A man who hates the subject of his writings is as pitiable as a coprophagic with haemorrhoids. The more he consumes of what he desires, the more painful he knows will be the consequence.

Termites and rabbits do plenty of the former, but Mother Nature has relieved them of the latter.  Russia-hating writers on Russia are not so favoured; they are the only cases I know which combine, and enjoy,  the perversity with the pain. In their cases, there’s always been something missing between their upper and lower holes – I mean more is missing than a sense of taste and a sense of humour.

Michel de Montaigne, the French politician and writer of sixteenth century France – inventor of the essay – is their antithesis. He deserves to be remembered for two mottoes we shall need in 2018. Re-read the essays in the translation by Donald Frame here.  Ignore the recent biography by a Chicago professor of French origin named Philippe Desan; he has spent an academic career and eight hundred fresh printed pages revealing his envy that Montaigne will be read for longer than Desan will be forgotten.  Envy like this will also have to be overcome to get through the coming year; more of that in a moment. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, December 18th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

This isn’t news:  President Vladimir Putin (lead image, right) is running for re-election on March 18.

According to the latest national polls, he is likely to win with a larger majority of a smaller turnout than in 2012. As Tiny Tim (left) almost said in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, God bless us, almost every one!

What is news is that after declaring his re-election bid to a group of autoworkers; proclaiming a hike in pensions from New Year’s Day; and announcing to Russian troops in Syria that most of them will return home,  Putin is not – repeat not — hosting his annual Christmas dinner for the oligarchs.  God bless us, almost every one! (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, December 14th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Russia’s leading state banker German Gref (lead image, left) and members of the Russian intelligentsia have written to the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announcing their judgement that Suleiman Kerimov (centre) is innocent of the indictment the French prosecutor has filed in Nice. This charges Kerimov with laundering  more than half a billion US dollars, allegedly transported in suitcases of cash through Nice airport; and evasion of millions of Euros in French property sale taxes through fraudulent transactions extending from the south of France to Switzerland.  

The Russian group also reveals that Kerimov suffers from severe cardiological problems for which the letter proposes he would be better cared for medically in Russia, rather than in France.

Heading the eleven signatories of the letter to Macron is Mikhail Prokhorov (right) and his sister, Irina. She is a member of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a French honorific well below the Légion; she then obtained a promotion to the Legion in 2012. The first honour conferred by the French on her brother is that until Kerimov,  he was  the only Russian oligarch to have been jailed in France on a criminal charge.

According to Prokhorov, Gref and the others, Kerimov is “a supreme statesman of the Russian Federation”, and accordingly, he should be released from detention in France to “continue his  work in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.”  This is the first time a Russian has publicly identified any work Kerimov has done in the upper house of parliament since his election in 2008. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, December 11th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Carl von Clausewitz, the 19^th century German soldier and military strategist, famously remarked that war is the continuation of policy (politics) by other means.

By war, von Clausewitz meant the old-fashioned idea of running people through or making them run away, so they give up their territory, treasure, and women.  By war these days there are fresh ways of running people through and grabbing treasure and women. There’s cyber warfare, which strikes at the enemy’s minds, not their bodies; sanctions, which are  the modern form of siege warfare, starving the enemy of cash for food; and sports warfare, which means killing the most popular entertainment in the world.  Olympic Games  and World Cup football have replaced rape and rapine of olden times, at least in countries which regard themselves as civilized.

Since the US has been at war with Russia from 2014, the military junta in Washington has lost its  campaign on the Syrian front. On the Ukraine front it has been so bogged down that Kiev has lost  more treasure than it can hope to recover in a generation, or two.  The US is also losing its military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.  The escalation of military operations and sanctions war on the Korean front has achieved no American policy goals. Quite the opposite. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, December 7th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Extracting guilty pleas from the innocent was the specialty of the Spanish Inquisition and its Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada (lead image, centre).

Extracting guilty pleas from the dead is the specialty of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (right), and Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov (left), head of the Church commission investigating the deaths of Tsar Nicholai II and the Romanov family. They were executed on July 17, 1918, by the revolutionary government.  Kirill has also declared that his inquisition has the backing of the Russian state, in the person of President Vladimir Putin with whom Kirill claims to have had a private conversation on the matter recently.

There followed last week the announcement from the General Prosecutor in Moscow that its department for special cases is conducting a new investigation of the charge that the execution of the tsar was a ritual killing carried out by Jews. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, December 5th, 2017
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